HF-SQL: Design choices

One of the difficulties I face as a programmer/ amateur application designer is how to decide on the tables and when to split them (normalize) and what kind of design. That is should I generally have Small no of large tables or Large no of small tables- From my point of view it comes to Ease of use/Performance vs Normalization/Ease of understanding(Really! I am not sure!)

The authors talk about covering normalization in another thread, what other db design topics are covered in the book?